In Remembrance
by Cantica10
Summary: Donna Noble receives the only gift The Doctor can offer.


I saw a picture on pinterest today that nearly made me cry and I wanted to write a full story about it… It probably won't be very long, which is strange to me as I'm not usually one for very short stories, but I hope you enjoy it.

Description: Donna Noble receives the only gift The Doctor can offer.

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"In Remembrance."

It was an entirely ordinary day. The sky was an intense blue interrupted by scattered clouds, there was a soft breeze drifting through the air, and humans were busy being perfectly, beautifully human. There were people being born, riding bicycles, having picnics, getting married, starting families… and, as all humans must, there were those who were dying.

In Room 14 of Meadow Court Nursing Home, a woman with white hair that was once a fiery red was embracing her end. She was dying, and she could feel somehow that this would be the day she had been approaching for some time now. She was dying of the only human condition there was no hope of curing – old age.

She didn't regret anything about how she'd spent her life. There had been those few tough years, of course, working as a temp and waiting for something bigger and better, but everything that came after those few brief, almost insignificant years had been spectacular. She'd married a good man, a man who had departed from this world six years ago and waited for her to join him, and by some miracle, one of their wedding presents – a lottery ticket – had made them fabulously wealthy. She'd had three beautiful children and had become a grandmother and, very recently, a great-grandmother. She looked fondly at the pictures of her family as her end approached, thinking about all those years and all the love she'd experienced.

If there was one regret she harbored, it was that she often felt like she'd forgotten something important. The only disturbing thing about it was that it kept coming back, that feeling. The feeling came and went, triggered by different things, but it never lasted long when it came. There was the time she'd gotten it when her daughter had come home complaining about a report on Pompeii and its destruction, and it came when she saw screwdrivers and beetles.

It was like she had forgotten a person who she once knew and cared for, maybe even loved. She hated the feeling. She had gone through four psychologists and uncountable sessions of therapy, but she could never shake it.

She could feel her end coming, closer and closer, and she began to think about that feeling. If there was only one thing she could wish for now, as she drew her final breaths, it was that she could remember what it was she had forgotten.

She suddenly became aware of the man standing in the corner of her bedroom, watching her. He was a young bloke with a mop of brown hair, wearing braces, a jacket with patched elbows, and a spotted blue bowtie. He was dressed like other residents in the nursing home, and a spark of her irritable nature flared. She considered yelling at him for mocking her and the people who she lived with, for wasting her final moments with curiosity for his purpose as opposed to doing what she should be… trying to remember.

In a small voice, she asked him who he was.

The man stepped forward with a smile and asked her, very softly, to please trust him. He seated himself on the edge of her bed and stretched out his hands, pressing his fingertips against her temples.

And suddenly she was flying through dreams, adventures of aliens and monsters, of times that had passed and times that had yet to be. A flying blue box… TARDIS… a beautiful, haunting, and devastating song, not originating from any creature or instrument on Earth. Words flooded her mind that she felt like she both knew and didn't; Ood, Pyroviles, Daleks, Sontarans, Adipose…

She couldn't be quite sure of the moment that she became aware that the dreams were memories, but she didn't care. She remembered everything. She had saved worlds and species, had watched planets being created and planets reaching their end. She had saved humanity.

She was the most important woman in the world.

And most of all, she remembered the Doctor. The tall and awkward man with an impossible personality and comically unkempt hair, who had built up her confidence every time she'd torn herself down, who was always appalled by the way she didn't seem to know just how important she was.

There had been a time when she knew everything.

There had been a time when she didn't need to rely on anything but her own bravery and her own instincts, a time when she had faced all her fears and risen to the unimaginable. And it had all been thanks to the Doctor, who had enriched her life in so many ways.

He was her best friend. And she was his. And he had given it all up to save her life.

It occurred to her quite abruptly that she had seen this bloke, the one in her bedroom and bestowing upon her everything she had lost, before. She'd never noticed him, not really, but now she remembered.

He was the man who had held the door for her and offered her a smile when her arms had been filled with groceries and she'd had a frustrating day.

He was the man who had given her his umbrella in the rain one day, insisting she take it without accepting any compensation.

He was the man who, at one time when her daughter had fallen off the jungle gym and broken her leg in the local park, called 999 and sat by her side as they waited for an ambulance to arrive, offering reassurances to her and her daughter both.

He was the man who had been there so many times throughout her life, impacting her in small ways and making her days just a bit better, a man who vanished before she could ever ask his name.

Her best friend, who had never abandoned her and never forgotten her.

Her eyes sparkled with tears as the Doctor pulled his fingers away from her temples. "Doctor," she whispered on a sob of joy.

His eyes swum with tears as well as he leaned forward and pressed his lips against her brow. "Love you, Donna Noble," he murmured.

A smile on her lips, Donna shut her eyes and sighed, breathing her last perfectly content and perfectly at peace, carrying the best gift she had received in all her life into death.

The Doctor stood and stepped away from her bed, sinking into a chair at the opposite end of the room and burying his face in his hands as he cried, suffering the loss of his best friend alone and consoling himself knowing that in the final moments at least, he had given her all he could, the only gift he could have offered.


End file.
